


up against the glass

by Catznetsov



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Jealousy, M/M, Washington Capitals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 00:30:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12829443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catznetsov/pseuds/Catznetsov
Summary: “Are you gonna lick him so no one else will touch?” Sasha asks, interested.





	up against the glass

**Author's Note:**

> For the sinbin prompt "jealous!ovi"

2007

After a full year of enthusiasm, Alex hits a snag.

His center, who might or might not have a personality yet, is nevertheless supposed to be his. Alex has been very clear on this for a year, and everyone in management has nodded along with him, and now they’re just shuffling him off on anybody else for the preseason.

Sasha, who is supposed to be on Alex’s side, is the worst.

“Are you gonna lick him so no one else will touch?” Sasha asks, interested, after a practice he spent tugging Bäckström up and down the rink, and Alex stares him.

“What?”

“You know—“ Sasha says, and makes a show of licking something. It’s less disgusting than he means to be. Alex, who is going to grow into his own eyebrows any day now, resents liking his dumb freckly pretty boy face so much. “Like little kids, yeah?”

“Are you still little?” Alex asks, baffled, and protective of some feeling he doesn’t quite know and hadn’t noticed until it scurried away from the sudden light.

Sasha only shrugs, looping an arm around Alex. “Vichka. And Zhenya does that all the damn time, too, like….” he says, and trails off, rocking Alex idly back and forth. That’s his niece’s name, Alex is pretty sure, and right now Alex thinks the fine lines around Sasha’s mouth turn harsh when he remembers his friends back home and the kids he used to look after. It’s excuse enough for Alex to stop talking about what he doesn’t want to talk about, and it’ll take a few years for him to realize he’s missed more than a couple threads.

Next time they let him near a camera he makes sure to tell reporters Sasha said something that sounds like they’re sleeping together, and keeps it up for a couple weeks. He’s not sure who he’s trying to make fun of or impress, so he can’t tell himself why he’s angry when a few people frown and everyone laughs, but Bäckström only rolls his eyes. He doesn’t think Alex sees him do it, and Alex doesn’t know why he was watching.

—

  
2008

Greenie’s less Sasha than Sasha, but he doesn’t owe Alex any loyalty either.

Of course Alex expected his own room assignment, and he hadn’t thought about any other possibilities until he realized that Mike and Backy would wind up together. Had asked to be together, and that keeps Alex sitting in bed long after they’ve turned the lights out, wondering things.

He bumps Backy’s shoulder from behind as they shuffle down to breakfast, and gets just the corner of a smile tipped back for him. Alex spends the elevator down pressed against the rail, eyeing the curls just in front of him while Backy gossips with Greenie like they haven’t had all night for that. Once they’re filling their plates and he sees Backy hesitate, holding his omelette and deliberating whether to wait for Mike to finish whatever he’s doing to his granola at the other end of the line.

“Backy, c’mon,” Alex says, and smacks the tabletop across from him. Backy startles, but comes easily enough, then lingers again before sitting down.

Alex taps the table again, turning it into a drumroll, and Backy rolls his eyes but finally sits. He makes to smack his plate down on Alex’s hands until Alex darts back.

“Backy, grumpy!” he says, delighted. He feints for Backy’s coffee, knowing it’ll be the most valuable target, but Backy only puts down an arm bar between Alex and all his food instead of allowing an opening. “What, don’t sleep okay?”

Greenie drops his granola next to Alex, and that wasn’t the point, so before Backy can turn back to him Alex waves a hand between them.

“You don’t speak English,” Alex says. “Come on, Backy. Don’t need talk to Greener always.”

Greenie laughs comfortably, but Backy catches Alex with a quick look that says he’s seen Alex staring, felt the tension under Alex’s tone. Alex holds his gaze, and now Backy’s the one staring, but he’s better at it than Alex, because right now if anyone called him on it, out from under his fluttery shell, he wouldn’t fucking care.

“Don’t you have a friend already?” Backy says, curling over the words. Someone else whoops, but he doesn’t look away from Alex’s eyes until Alex turns his hand over on the table.

“Sure,” he says. “So? Want you.”

Backy blinks at him, slow and easy, like a cat’s smile. But then that night after the game he slips away, and his and Mike’s door closes with Alex on the wrong fucking side of it. He broods over it all evening and long after lights out, and the grim thing is that even Alex can’t stretch such a little grudge out so far, except—except for that closed door, Backy with Mike on the other side, and Alex doesn’t know what he’s even imagining, except that there’s a door between him and it, so it could be anything. Alex can’t let go when he doesn’t know.

And it doesn’t make sense. Backy is comfortable with Greenie, and Greenie is phenomenal at comfort, but Alex is fun, and Alex is easy. Alex could be a great roommate. Sure, Alex isn’t as pretty as Sam can be, but he’s pretty sure everyone’s noticed he’s cuter than Mike—and that’s when Alex has to stop and stare blankly at the shadowed floral print on the hotel wall for a while.

“I’m sorry I called you a little kid,” Sasha says through his pillow in the darkness. “God, I miss children.”

“Go the fuck to sleep, Sam,” Alex groans. Sasha only flaps a hand at him, face still planted in his pillow, and then gropes for something to throw. “Fuck you, okay.”

Sasha lifts his head up to enunciate, “Children ask for what they want,” and then sits up abruptly to hurl his spare pillow at Alex’s head. Alex catches it, more or less, and dazedly pins it to his chest.

He spends the night thinking about licking Backy.

—

  
2008

Team Sweden don’t know how lucky they are.

They know they’re real fucking lucky, but that’s not the same thing. Alex doesn’t think anyone knows how transcendently grateful they should be that Nicky is, just that, just is, and that means Nicky doesn’t either because no one’s been telling him.

Alex would frankly like to fuck up Team Sweden. Alex does fuck up Team Sweden’s hockey, but just a bit, setting up a circling Sasha to tie in the first minute of the second, then swooping in on Sasha’s pass in the last seconds of the third to spare them all overtime. Sweden played well, and Nicky played well, even if they sent in both under his nose.

The handshake line is for hooking a hand in Nicky’s jersey, Alex pulling himself in against him because Nicky’s standing steady as a fucking rock.

“You lot win if you have me,” Alex whispers to him, and Nicky laughs in his face, a soft press of breath against his cheek.

“Ja, okay,” Nicky says, almost without making a sound, “Fuck off,” but he lets Alex catch him again, soothing over his shoulder.

“No, you know. You and me and Sasha—any of us, two-on-one’s no fair. ‘Cause when it two of us playing you….” he see-saws his hand. “Have to be little bit Nicky for Sasha, little bit Nicky for me. You alone, they got you with whoever, don’t know what Nicky for, what you can do. Real Nicky—best Nicky—with me, though, that’s least fair for other team.” He can’t tell if Nicky’s leaning into his hand or not, so he lets it slip down to curl around Nicky’s arm just to stop imagining it.

Nicky giggles, sharp and honest in front of twelve thousand hockey fans who just saw Team Sweden lose, although admittedly many of them are emptying out of the stands already.

“I’m very serious!” Alex tells him, still whispering, like they’re little children telling stories, like the monsters in the stands and behind the TV cameras won’t see them if they keep each other close. This is what he’s jealous over, obsessive over, vicious over, that they can be a miracle and that Nicky knows it, too.

“Ja,” Nicky says, turning his face back up to him. “Okay.”

—

  
2014

When Alex snarls, Zhenya laughs in his face. It’s a lot less achingly attractive than when Nicky does that.

Someone with much too much self-esteem did a number on him before Alex had a chance to, which is irritating.

 **You fucked up my rookie ((((** , Alex texts Sasha later. He gets back a snap of Sasha laughing at him, shirtless or more probably naked by the pool. He’s gotten a new chain that Alex wants immediately, and Alex hates him. He has to wait to get home to take a better selfie to respond with, since everything on his American phone is from back in the spring. He can beat Sasha, but he needs to bring his best.

How can anyone get that tan in fucking Krasnoyarsk, anyway?

 **ok what’s up?** Sasha texts the next week, after the slap-fighting has cooled down.

 **tell your boy stop taking Nicky’s fucking things** , Alex says.

 **tell Nicky to** , Sasha sends back. **if he wants...**

Alex thinks about it, and sends, **NO.**

 **Tell him give me back my socks** , Sasha says. Alex realizes he isn’t still talking about Nicky before he massively overreacts. **From WC. he always steals them.** **Stole my favorite deke too.** **It’s not a problem, Sanka.**

Alex has monumental doubts about that, but he’s already let Sasha corner him into visiting his lake in the middle of Siberia this summer and he can recognize a loosing streak, so he hides his phone from himself under the couch cushions.

Also irritating is how Zhenya loves Nicky from a short distance, as if he’d be just as happy back in Chelyabinskaya watching Nicky’s highlights on Youtube. Sure, he takes Nicky’s things, and he always skates up to kiss Nicky politely thank you, but he leans in easily because it’s a light love to carry, for him. Some moments Alex can’t stand Kuzma looking up to Nicky, and then he hates how he doesn’t mimic him as much as he does Alex himself or Sasha.

Beag’s kid is having a hard time at Family Skate, pulling away whenever his mother tries to steady him, even though he’s more wobbly than he wants to admit. Alex glides up to check in just in time to see him push her again and the hard line between Jay’s eyebrows tick higher.

“Okay. You’re being rude to your mom, buddy,” Jay says, and starts to make a face at Alex when he catches his eye. Then he seems to reconsider, just shrugs, and Alex shrugs back at him. But he watches the harsh, hurt set of Jay’s mouth for a minute longer, until he finds his wife’s hand and leans into her shoulder.

Alex’s mother used to look like that, sometimes, when Alex glanced back over his shoulder as he ran to copy her and brushed off whatever his father tried to say. It’s hard to bear loving someone and seeing someone else seem to love them less, he guesses, and then reminds himself he apparently doesn’t have to guess.

—

  
2015

Osh is like being given a second Sasha for his birthday, and Alex is delighted, mostly.

The touching Nicky is okay, something that they’ve settled over the years. Nicky calls it his Sasha Clause, when the lure of laughing at Alex is stronger than his need to hold the odd high ground of never speaking about it. Alex wouldn’t mind speaking about it, doesn’t mind thinking about it. Nicky has settled like silt or lake sand into the shape of someone who rarely asks for touch anymore, even if he wants it just as much. Without Sasha’s constant honest hunger, or comfortable Mike, someone has to gather the courage to cuddle him, or he’ll slowly grind himself down. Alex likes seeing him be touched, being given the attention and affection he’s due without having to ask for it, even if he can acknowledge that not asking hasn’t been working for a while now.

He likes thinking about it.

It can’t just anyone—neither Nicky nor Alex would like that—but Osh is lovely all over, and he obviously loved the thought of Nicky long before he meets him, in a way that fits easily with Alex’s. Management’s favorite realtor or whoever finds him a house on Nicky’s street, and when TJ says Nicky’s been inviting him for dinner Alex is delighted Nicky’s happy with him too. And then he realizes TJ means dinner at Nicky’s house, in Nicky’s kitchen.

Probably this means dinner Nicky cooked, and Alex knew for a given value of never having thought about it that Nicky could make food, but he’s never been allowed in there. Back when they lived in each other’s pockets they’d also been living off prepared meal plans and Alex or Sasha’s mamas’ cooking. After Nicky moved out of the Nylanders’ and started sleeping over at Alex’s more, Alex probably saw him make hungover toast he wouldn’t share. They’ve gone home together and gone out to dinner countless times at private tables downtown—and Alex had tried to count them, each evening settling in his stomach and his bones until there were simply too many. But he’s never eaten at Nicky’s house as if it’s home.

—

  
2017

Barry is the worst marriage counselor Alex has ever been to.

“You think he thinks if you two see other people for a while, you’ll find that spark again?” Evgeny asks, interested, after a practice he spent dragging Alex around and around the net.

“Why are you like this?” Alex says, pulling him in with an arm around his shoulders, tired and protective of the feelings he’s spent years shoving out of sight. There’s no one left to fucking talk to about them, except Nicky himself, and maybe one day he’ll go, too.  
  
Kuzy cackles, right in his ear, but settles his weight into Alex’s side for a moment in solidarity before he races away.

“Hey,” Nicky says, soft, when Alex wanders back to the bench.

“Hey,” Alex says. He doesn’t reach out, but Nicky tips his face up towards him anyway. One of his curls is slipping forward, and Alex brushes it off his cheek just for something to do. It’s stiff with sweat, and the heat of Nicky’s skin.

“Hey, Ovi,” Barry booms behind them. Alex closes his eyes, and when he opens them again Nicky’s teeth are set into his lip. “We want to talk to you for a minute.”

“Yeah, ‘course, Coach,” Alex says. He hears Barry tromp back down the hall, and lets his hand fall, the very edge of his nail catching on Nicky’s lip. Nicky finds his hand before Alex draws it back, unfolds his fingers and presses it to his chest.

Ask for what you want, Alex thinks.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I almost wrote about Caps without mentioning anyone's hair. it was real close, folks!


End file.
